The Landscape of Historical Memory: The Politics of Museums and Memorial Culture in Post-Martial Law Taiwan

Prasenjit Duara emphasized that the nation-state is a political form with distinct territorial boundaries within which the sovereign state, "representing" the nation-people, has steadily expanded its role and power. 1 As the basis of cohesion and identity, a nation is "born" as "the social process of defining the object (i.e., its construction) enables it to exist in a social context, to have meaning." 2 This is carried forward through censuses, maps, and museums. 3 Homi K. Bhabha captures this social process in his famous phrase: "nation as narration." 4 The "historical memory" of a people is the practice, representation, and characterization of how they understand the past and the relationship between people and history, 5 and the museum is a product of the visualization of historical memory.